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Minnesota Wild: Top Prospects Shine In Development Camp’s First Scrimmage

By Danny Lambert

Apr 9, 2016; Tampa, FL, USA; Quinnipiac Bobcats forward Sam Anas (7) skates with the puck as North Dakota Fighting Hawks defenseman Paul LaDue (6) defends during the first period of the championship game of the 2016 Frozen Four college ice hockey tournament at Amalie Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
Apr 9, 2016; Tampa, FL, USA; Quinnipiac Bobcats forward Sam Anas (7) skates with the puck as North Dakota Fighting Hawks defenseman Paul LaDue (6) defends during the first period of the championship game of the 2016 Frozen Four college ice hockey tournament at Amalie Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Minnesota Wild had their first of development camp two scrimmages at Xcel Energy Center yesterday afternoon.  The Wild prospects played great and a few of them stood out and showed the State of Hockey that the future of the organization looks very promising.

As the Minnesota Wild continue to roll through their slate of Development Camp activities, today’s Green vs White scrimmage at the Xcel Center offered the public a view of team’s best and brightest prospects in game action.   The young future Wild players showed their prowess for a full 60-minute game to include a five minute 3-on-3 overtime frame.  The result was a 4 to 4 tie, but more importantly to key into was that there were some spectacular individual performances.

The show stealer for sure was White goaltender Adam Vay.  The Hungarian netminder picked up right where he left off in the World Championships and made some spectacular saves.  He stopped 26 shots in 25 minutes of play and just seemed to be aggressive attacking every shot.  If he keeps this up there’s no doubt that he’ll be competing for serious minutes in Iowa next season.

Scoring wise one line seemed to standout as the best combination and a possible line combination for next year in Iowa.  The White team’s line of Sam Anas, Joel Eriksson-Ek, and Alex Tuch accounted for two of the team’s four goals with Eriksson-Ek and Anas notching a goal apiece.  Anas showed excellent stickhandling skills in his goal, and Eriksson-Ek buried a great back and forth exchange with Tuch.  Watching this line really gives Wild fans hope that excellent scoring talent is in the pike and could be ready for the NHL soon.

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For the Green team Mario Lucia, Nick Seeler, and Zac Mitchell all tallied goals as well.  Iowa head coach Derek Lalonde was especially happy with Mitchell’s play in the game saying to Dan Myers of wild.com ““I’ve been impressed with Zack. He scored 20 goals on a team last year that didn’t win a lot of games. That’s a guy that’s had two full years of pro hockey, he’s in his third camp, you’d hope he’d start to separate himself and he looks like that.”

So the big take away from yesterday’s scrimmage is that the players who should be playing well are.  The top prospects like Anas, Tuch, Eriksson-Ek, Lucia, and Seeler are starting to show that the Wild scouting has been successful in the last couple of years in gaining some top scorers.  Also if these players keep this up they could find themselves with the big club in Minnesota in limited stints as early as next season.

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The club should be optimistic about their future, and as the camp moves into one more practice season and the final scrimmage on Sunday they’ll have much more chances to see their prospects in action.  For the fans it’s just another chance to get a glimpse of the future of State of Hockey and get a little bit of hockey joy in the middle of the summer.

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